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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117958">(Almost Sacred)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygladiola/pseuds/ivorygladiola'>ivorygladiola</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Death Note &amp; Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime &amp; Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Wammy's House (Death Note)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 11:41:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,665</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117958</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygladiola/pseuds/ivorygladiola</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's years after murder notebooks, and L's successors are either dead or lying, and Near is still mourning Mello, (Halle thinks).</p><p>May God have mercy on the alphabet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>(Almost Sacred)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Ink was on her hands and knees.</p><p>By the time she'd coerced an edelweiss into blossoming on the concrete just beside the orphanage's front doorstep, pink stained her white-blonde bangs, sky blue smudged where she once scratched above a cold-staring eye, sea green smeared her forearms, there were spots of yellow on the pulled-up sleeves of her black overshirt, and purple on the soles of her white socks, which mixed with the dark filth that inevitably accumulated on her feet as a result of constantly walking around with no shoes on.</p><p>The sun set to an entire driveway that had disappeared under an almost breathing expanse of chalk flowers that floated upright separately into the three-dimensional plane when viewed from a specific angle (a fat sunflower for anyone standing next to the wrought iron gates, tiger lilies from the second floor library), and bathed Ink in an ethereal glow that made her look like she was bestowing the earth with a blessing.</p><p>Meanwhile, all around her, her fellows (fellow gifted, fellow madmen, fellow privileged stowaways) once again enjoyed the fruits of her latest insanity, laughing and running to keep changing positions in an attempt to see everything.</p><p>"I've been meaning to ask," Ink murmured, grabbing a lock of her short, loose curls and putting it into her mouth so she could <em>bite.</em></p><p>"But why are you so scared of me, Ms. Lidner?"</p><p>Halle felt her pulse quicken, the amalgamation of two familiar gestures triggering her adrenaline the same way each of them had by itself.</p><p>A twirl of white around pale fingers; dark chocolate between gleaming teeth. Always, always accompanied by a decisive deduction, or a destructive decision.</p><p>"I'm not scared of you, Ink," Halle lied. Even though she couldn't cross the invisible line that surrounded the child (made of towers of blocks meticulously stacked like an afterthought, or a tangible air of menace that smelled faintly like processed sugar? She couldn't decide).</p><p>"You just remind me of some people I used to...work with." (Worked with, tiptoed around, danced for with a gun behind her head.)</p><p>Ink gnashed her dry ends disgustingly between her molars. "Then...were you scared of <em>them?</em>"</p><p>A light scuffle between some children who wanted the view standing on a low branch afforded broke the stillness of the air.</p><p>"I suppose...I was scared of the kind of circumstances people like them tended to end up in."</p><p>Ink pushed her tongue out to free it from the tangles of her own tangles. She picked up what remained of her colored chalk, stuffed them into their plastic case, and made a quiet sound of agreement, "Yes. We seem to be made specifically for tragedy, people like me."</p><p>Halle narrowed her eyes, suspicious.</p><p>"Ink, what are you up to?"</p><p>Ink raised her eyebrows, thoughtfully, (theatrically). "Hm? Oh, I was bored." She clasped her chalk case closed primly.</p><p>Halle frowned, aware that the confession was fake.</p><p>(Suddenly the driveway of flowers felt like a colorful crime scene.)</p><p>The problem was this was Wammy's. To its inhabitants, the truth was a weapon, not something they freely handed over. Not even to the people who wanted to protect them.</p><p>"Ink - "</p><p>A commotion from an open upstairs window drew Halle's interrogation to a halt. Irritated, she raised her gaze to where a string of older children were running in and out of one of the shared bedrooms, frantic. It didn't occur to her to be panicked herself, until Evee (thirteen, half a head taller than Ink, smiled uncanny-like) appeared between the curtains, and released a red, red apple into Halle's waiting reflexes.</p><p>Carved into one side of the uneaten fruit were three words:</p><p>
  <em>Luck is Dead</em>
</p><p>Halle was running before she could think.</p><p>(She had dropped the apple at the sight of the broken heart gutted out below the message, memories of comrades turning into falling bodies that resembled a young boy's tumbling dice numbing her into inaction.</p><p>Ink had picked it up. Eyes glittering, she'd grumbled, "I'm too late."</p><p>And Halle had snatched the apple back, electrocuted into movement by the familiar feeling of being one of the less intelligent that did not know what was going on.)</p><p>In truth, Halle (Lidner, Bullook, retired Secret Service agent, former Special Provision for Kira, new manager of the house that nurtured unsolicited excellence) was an incredibly smart and resourceful woman, if fairly scaled against human beings other than the inhuman potential successors to the title of L.</p><p>Smart enough to have survived being the middleman to the two halves of the force that had dealt Kira the final blow. Resourceful enough to keep a house full of children just like them occupied, fed, sane.</p><p>Safe - until now.</p><p>"St. Luck," Halle breathed out another of their ridiculous monikers, as she stepped through the threshold of one of the older girls’ shared bedrooms.</p><p>Though to (Sarah? It was something melodic like that, her real name), the sobriquet had been the result of numerous instances that had displayed her stunning inability to - well - fail.</p><p>It had been the opposite of being accident-prone, Halle had heard Ink murmur once.</p><p>She would pick an upside-down cup on the table and it would be the one out of the three that had the beetle-shaped chocolate. The rare instances she would say 'I don't know' or 'you guys choose,' it would be immediately discovered that there had been no chocolate under any of the cups in the first place, a riot would break out (the brilliant did not appreciate being made to feel anything less) and, somehow, the piece of candy that had been flaunted around at the start of the game to get people interested would end up found, grabbed at by several tiny hands until it was airborne, only to land gently into St. Luck's leather fingerless gloves.</p><p>That was why - despite Ink's nearly bipolar ability to shift between rational trance and bouts of enraged inspiration within seconds, and Evee's proficiency in bullying the cooperation out from any person, object, and situation - St. Luck had always been the one most believed would succeed L.</p><p>When the other two lacked information, resources, the chance to meet face to face to allow for up-close psychological warfare; when they didn't know, <em>they did not know.</em></p><p>While St. Luck - every time that her quick thinking and boundless creativity had failed to bring her the answer - she would guess, and no matter how ridiculous, she would be right.</p><p>There was luck, in the familiar sense, and Ink and Evee would have their share of that too.</p><p>But then there was blessed fortune incarnate, and that was something only St. Luck had possessed. And now she was gone.</p><p>Halle would not hear the end of this from L.</p><hr/><p>Apparently, St. Luck had died, in her bed, her long, pink-tipped hair undisturbed, (painlessly).</p><p>It was her last display of just how lucky she had been.</p><p>"Poor misfortune," that was what Halle, at first, heard. When she turned to the thin voice that had spoken, she realized "Poor Miss Fortune," was what Evee had actually said.</p><p>It was her nickname for her deceased rival (a play on words, a mockery).</p><p>(A threat?)</p><p>"I told everyone to stay in their rooms, Evee." Halle sighed, both tired and ready to fight.</p><p>Evee grinned (uncanny-like), red specks on her hair, which was as long and as black as St. Luck's had been, but nowhere near as well-styled. Strawberry jam, not blood, Halle had to remind herself. There were even crumbs of bread still on her hands and face.</p><p>"I just wanted to give you something before you leave, Ms. Lidner," said Evee, pulling out a large bar of chocolate from behind her, and proffering it while biting down on her lower lip (as if to control her excitement).</p><p>Halle reluctantly took the candy. "And where am I going?"</p><p>Evee blinked her eyes open wider. "To see L, of course. When you do, please give that to him." She pointed at the rectangle that glinted with tinfoil at two ends between Halle's fingers.</p><p>Before the beads of cold sweat could travel too far down the older woman's neck, Evee was down the hallway, back the way she came, only pausing long enough to grab her apple from the windowsill where Halle had set it down earlier (too heavy on top of the sight of a young girl's dead body), and take a bite out of the side with her message on it (eating her own words).</p><hr/><p>When Halle reached the study Roger Ruvie had entrusted her with, along with the lives of all the L prospects of that generation, she wanted a drink.</p><p>Her laptop was still open (abandoned what feels like years ago, to hurry after the smaller children who'd trailed brightly colored chalk across the carpet and consequently alerted her to Ink's latest exploits), a familiar stylized L gleaming white against a black backdrop on her screen. It hadn't been there before.</p><p>The blue dot of light beside her webcam announced that it was already on.</p><p>Taking a seat, Halle settled Evee's package on her lap, out of the camera's view.</p><p>"Lidner," Near's mechanical voice masking program greeted her.</p><p>"Hello, L."</p><p>Halle knew he was L now. But, at least in her mind, she had to make the distinction.</p><p>"Isn't it early morning where you are?" She stalled. (She needed a second.) "Are you working?"</p><p>(Aren't you busy enough to let me figure out what the hell is going on? Couldn't you give me that?)</p><p>"No, we just wrapped up. I was in the process of offering my services to Interpol next, but then a satellite image of Wammy's House today caught my interest."</p><p>At the last word, her screen changed.</p><p>Halle sat there, mouth slightly open, and stared as the chalk garden Ink had placed upon herself to grow in the span of seven hours (sprouting a different three-dimensional flower from every angle) displayed a colorful Cloister Black L when viewed from hundreds of kilometers above the ground.</p><p>"How did you do this, Ink?" Halle couldn't help but feel the weight on her leg while the picture on her screen threw her mind out of balance.</p><p>More importantly:</p><p>"<em>Why?</em>"</p><p>Near had an answer; Halle supposed it was a prerequisite for being L to always have, at least, a plausible explanation.</p><p>"If I were to guess, I would say this appears to be an S.O.S. from a very...creative individual who wanted to get my attention as soon as possible."</p><p>
  <em>I'm too late.</em>
</p><p>Halle breathed, "She knew..."</p><p>Damn these geniuses, she had to make herself feel stupid just to keep up.</p><p>"Knew what, exactly?"</p><p>There it was. The voice that could grow irritated even as it refused to waver.</p><p>Halle could almost see the eyes that had glared with contempt as the President of the United States had once practically pledged allegiance to a self-proclaimed god too spineless to even show his own face.</p><p>"The child," Halle said to her webcam solemnly, "who had been most likely to succeed you has...passed away."</p><p>A soft "pkoosh" from Near's side of the call suggested to Halle the possibility that the man behind L was perhaps dealing with the sudden news by having whichever plane or action figure was within his reach fly around and crash.</p><p>"How?"</p><p>("A broken heart," Halle thought, remembering Evee's apple.)</p><p>She went with the more medically correct term: "Cardiac arrest."</p><p>Near did not speak for several minutes. When he did, Halle had a feeling that he had discarded his chosen toy to clutch one kneecap to his chest with one hand and improve the curls of his hair with the fingers of the other.</p><p>"That is very similar to a heart attack."</p><p>"It's close. But it's far more peaceful."</p><p>"When was this?"</p><p>"Just this evening." Halle smiled wryly, "I was about to inform Watari, but as usual, you were already one step ahead."</p><p>Halle frowned. So was everyone else, it seemed.</p><p>(An S.O.S. from Ink. A gift from Evee. Truths they trusted only L with.)</p><p>This was Wammy's House after all.</p><p>A window popping up above Ink's colorful L brought Halle's attention back to her screen.</p><p>Flight details.</p><p>"Take the child who wished to contact me with you."</p><p>"Where are we going?"</p><p>Near said carelessly, "To see me."</p><p>Halle scoffed, nearly delirious with disbelief.</p><p>
  <em>To see L, of course.</em>
</p><p>"She knew this would happen, too."</p><p>Halle had said it off-handedly, but Near's masked voice grew irritated once again.</p><p>"The child that sent the S.O.S.?"</p><p>Halle blinked, "No. Another one. The - "</p><p>The flight details on her screen changed to include a third ticket. "Then bring that child as well."</p><p>Halle nodded, carefully.</p><p>"You should...try to get some rest, L."</p><p>Normally, she would be dismissed for saying something like that. The transmission stayed on.</p><p>"If you must know," Near paused (there was something muffling his speech when he continued that made Halle glance down at the wrapped candy still on her thigh), "I'm waiting to see the sun rise."</p><p>(Because you miss the gold of his hair?)</p><p>"Have a safe trip."</p><p>Halle pressed her laptop closed, allowed herself to lean back into her chair (to regroup her frazzled thoughts, to drink in the calm before the storm), before getting up to inform the new front-runners for the title of L that their plane departed in three hours.</p><hr/><p>Evee did not like the flying. She had night terrors of being burned alive, and if the plane crashed because the pilot was stupid, it was not impossible to end up being burned alive. So many pilots were incredibly stupid. So many people were incredibly stupid. St. Luck most of all.</p><p>"Miss Fortune deserved it," she sneered through gritted teeth. Halle did not have the heart to tell her that the scathing effect she was attempting to put forth was somewhat dampened by how tightly she was clutching the arm of the girl beside her.</p><p>Ink, for her part, looked appalled and flabbergasted by the uncharacteristic display of vulnerability from the older girl.</p><p>She gazed at their guardian, helpless. But Halle only shrugged. It wouldn't be long before they landed, anyway. And she felt like punishing the both of them for...being them.</p><p>(Somewhere in the non-life, a whisper that had once been a human named Naomi Misora laughed approvingly, while a series of pulsing nothings that had all at some point introduced themselves as letters pouted, indignant.)</p><p>"Why are we being summoned?" Ink asked quietly, starting herself on a train of thought complicated enough to distract her from her newly-acquired limpet.</p><p>Halle raised an eyebrow. "L seems to be under the impression you <em>wanted</em> to be summoned."</p><p>Evee grinned at Halle unkindly, even as she shivered against Ink. "She meant why bother bringing us in person. Half-smart people are only good for their brain. You can download a brain or write it down or have it painted. You don't need their <em>meat</em>."</p><p>Halle opened her mouth, unsure how to properly reply to that, when a bout of turbulence made their plane dip in mid-air. Evee made a valiant attempt to carve herself into Ink's chest, as if that would keep her safe.</p><p>"You - are - choking me - "</p><hr/><p>They did it to feel normal; geniuses, himself included. Nate River knew this, because of course he knew this, having been raised by a mind that could analyze and deconstruct and <em>abandon</em> over and over until a solution appeared or a building collapsed.</p><p>They did it the same way people without merit took up hobbies that did not serve them, spending hours and money and energy. They needed to be something, to feel more than they were. To feel better, smarter. In effect.</p><p>Persons that were L, and Matt and - the memory made Near still - persons that were Mello, on the other hand, they fiddled endlessly with finger puppets and gaming consoles, breathed in nicotine and chocolate bars like oxygen, because it shut their thinking down low enough for them to feel their bodies again.</p><p>To feel slower. Less like they were always on the brink of spilling over. Solid.</p><p>Just as the unremarkable sustained vices to try and elevate their paltry existence, L and the house of orphans his indispensability had spawned required continuous reminders of their humanity. From the feel of clicking puzzles, the desire to be knight or race car driver or sharpshooter, to the taste and texture of decadent desserts and oversweet tea. They needed it constantly and excessively, as page breaks from the preternaturalness that their unreachable IQ's afforded.</p><p>Even the false L, who had died to the public as a fallen policeman in pursuit of the greatest mass murderer that ever was, but who had writhed in his own blood before the few that had watched him go as <em>Kira</em>, even Light Yagami probably only wielded the Death Note as he had because it had allowed him to be corporeal. Because murder, no matter how structured, no matter how detailed, no matter how intricately planned, carried out, and then covered up, was irrational and animal.</p><p>Because ambitiousness was <em>common</em>.</p><p>They did it to feel alive. Which was why Nate River considered the very real possibility that there was nothing to the colored L. That his likeliest successor had simply died. That there weren't any curses from the grave or any shinigamis pulling pranks.</p><p>It might just be two children who were curious. Or bored. Either one was just as deadly as the other. Especially for people like them.</p><p>(Near had been lucky. Mello was never boring. And it was never a mystery what he wanted to say or who he wanted to be. Everything Near needed to know, he found in Mello's burning eyes.)</p><p>"Separate them," he told his Watari, over the intercom while he watched the children follow Halle down the hall, (carefully peering at their surroundings, trusting nothing,) through a wall packed with surveillance monitors.</p><p>With the click of a mouse, all the screens showed an interconnected close-up of the white-blonde ten-year-old whose eyes were blue enough to be familiar, but tamed, controlled. Disappointing.</p><p>He clicked back so the wide shot of the hallway was again contained to one screen, all the others around it returned to their proper channels as well.</p><p>"I'd like to talk to Halle first."</p><hr/><p>In an undisclosed location pretending to have nothing to do with the world's greatest detective L, Halle held herself back from asking Near if he was growing his hair out as another tribute to Mello.</p><p>It reached just the tops of his shoulders, in that annoying length curls weren't supposed to be kept in unless they were kept up with.</p><p>"The facts are as follows," he said, watching the part of the room that did not have Ink in it. Near had never been one to care about comfort or aesthetics. When it came to his preferences, instead of blue or homey or open, he liked spaces that were functional.</p><p>A wide empty floor to build things in, and high walls for electronic equipment to be taken in at a single glance.</p><p>"At 6:53 last night, a resident of the orphanage Wammy's House is found dead in her bed."</p><p>His current accommodations were a little different. It was a small country home. With French windows and expensive carpets. The garden was blooming. Near's own personal territory seemed to be a large drawing room at the back of the house, where the sun was always streaming in, when it could.</p><p>Every piece of furniture had been removed, save for a mismatched sofa and armchair stuffed carelessly in the corner. Halle was certain it had only been allowed in because of the rare arrival of guests.</p><p>"We'll assign her the name of 'S’," he punctuated this statement with a squeeze of the elongated paw on the gray-black bunny hat sitting haphazardly on his head, which shot a burst of air up to its corresponding ear, making it stand to attention cheerfully above its kawaii face, in perfect contrast to his blank, calculated stare.</p><p>Halle did not imagine the way Ink's eye twitched. Near had offered her the gray-black air-controlled bunny hat when she first sat down, possibly as a sort of welcome gift, but the younger girl, who liked baggy button-ups and pinafores she could get paint on and <em>common sense</em>, promptly rejected it with a look of disgust, so Near had donned it himself, pressed each air squeeze once and introduced himself, grimly, "I am L."</p><p>If anything, it had seemed to annoy Ink even more.</p><p>Halle knew it was not in her best interest to laugh. She hadn't noticed it back then (they were always too busy with fear and frustration and notebooks that shouldn't exist), but it was kind of fun, sicking these over-smart recluses on each other.</p><p>Especially while they ignored all the screaming, and the sounds of two grown men struggling to calm a thirteen-year-old down from all the way on the other side of the house. Chairs seemed to keep getting knocked over. And tables upturned.</p><p>"The death appears to be natural," <em>squeeze-squeeze</em>, and the gray-black bunny seemed to be the one giving the debriefing. "No suspicious activity was reported in the days leading up to the incident. The deceased did not have any enemies."</p><p>"Cloud?" Evee cried, because she seemed incapable of restraining herself from re-naming all of her already re-named peers, "BABY CLOUD, WHERE DID THEY TAKE YOU?"</p><p>"That is correct."</p><p>Ink studiously kept her eyes trained on the face of the man she knew as L as she agreed, "She was well-liked and polite."</p><p>Halle's fingers drummed lightly across her knee, the solitary slip in her magnificent self-control. She truly wanted to snigger.</p><p>When Roger, or Watari, depending on who you asked, calmly entered the room, he appeared to be smiling as well. Although, <em>his</em> smile gave the impression of being rooted in a fond memory of the past. Not instigated by their amusing present, only recalled by it.</p><p>"Sir, Rester and Gevanni have been incapacitated."</p><p>Halle dropped her gaze and sternly told herself that she was an adult.</p><p>Slowly, the world's greatest detective L turned towards his Watari. Halle did not imagine the way his eye twitched either.</p><p>"I see."</p><hr/><p>Evee was allowed to remain in the same room as Ink while L conducted his interrogation (and it was an interrogation, no one was under any illusions about this), so long as she wore the remote-operated noise-cancelling headphones Watari provided.</p><p>The young girl did not appreciate the benefits of regularly brushing or trimming her long, dark hair, which everyone respected because Evee terrified everyone, so when she had to leave the grounds of Wammy's, she wore a bright red beret. It made it easier to ask after her when she started causing trouble in town. It made her proud when it got her whispered about by store owners she hadn't even hurt yet. It was her signature.</p><p>The headphones with the beret, for some reason, made her look even more menacing.</p><p>Evee had been given a large straw-lidded tumbler of tomato juice to lure her away from two of the world's greatest intelligence agents. Both of them were unconscious (and, when they managed to wake, confused by how someone so thin and all over the place had managed to move so fast and land such good blows).</p><p>Near was much more successful in his interactions with this successor.</p><p>When he made his brief, profound introduction ("I am L," <em>squeeze-squeeze</em>), Evee had sipped loudly of her drink, and raised one long-fingered palm in an invitation for a high five.</p><p>The young man who had ended Kira's legendary reign of terror brought his head close to the younger girl's hand and let one gray-black bunny ear give the high five an answer.</p><p>Evee liked this.</p><p>She also immediately liked L's present for her. While Ink carried on with her conversation with their benefactor, host, and goal, Evee was by her feet whacking plastic moles on their exaggerated cartoon faces with a red play hammer that Halle suspected the girl would start carrying everywhere from now on, judging by the gleeful way she kept slamming it.</p><p>Smack, smack. <em>Smack</em>.</p><p>"Now, we have established S had no hated persons, and had nobody that hated them." Near finally tugged off the bunny hat, the joke having gotten old, and the need to twirl the spirals of his thoughts into submission by pretending they were on the tips of his hair greater than the sick pleasure he got from watching Ink's face pinch cutely in irritation.</p><p>"Can this be taken to mean then that S had...friends?"</p><p>He tossed aside the bunny hat without glancing at it again, and settled comfortably on the floor, where every piece of writing St. Luck had ever owned either covered some part of the surface in a specific pattern only known to him, or fluttered from clothes pins that hung from a festive crisscross of twine above them. Essays and letters to Father Christmas that stopped when she was eight years old and pages of maths practice work.</p><p>She signed her chosen name with a big S and a lowercase L and an uppercase K that curved stylishly at the final stroke.</p><p>Ink stared at the discarded bunny hat for several minutes, before sliding off of the sofa, to join Evee beside her, and L a few feet in front of them. She grabbed a fistful of her own hair and gnawed around it.</p><p>She opened her mouth –</p><p>"If you tell this man that Miss Fortune wasn't our friend, Cloud, I <em>will</em> kill you."</p><p>Halle, who had begun to worry when Ink tucked herself into an indecisive ball, startled at the venom in Evee's voice.</p><p>The older girl lifted her face from her new game, let several plastic moles pop out freely. She shifted the noise-cancelling headphones off one ear so they all heard the tinny classical music still streaming through it, and smiled, an insincere smirk. "I can read lips."</p><p>Near made an imperceptible gesture for the small cameras that were Watari's eyes in the room, and the music in Evee's headphones stopped completely. She pulled them down to rest around her neck.</p><p>"I will be able to glean more accurate information from both of you if we minimize your influence on each other."</p><p>Evee turned her new toy off with the same insincere smiley expression. "Scared of a coordinated defense, L?"</p><p>Halle saw how Near seemed to thaw from the inside at the taunt. Of course he was, reflected Halle, he knew what it could do. It had saved all their lives.</p><hr/><p>Light was pretty in the dark. In the daytime, when everyone was dappled in good and not-bad and bearable, he was nothing. Even while he excelled. There was nothing to shine on in a well-lit corner.</p><p>But in the darkness, he had been God.</p><p>"It's about contrast, is it not so?" St. Luck had told them, her accent sometimes coming through when she was particularly excited, "It's not that L had been 'justice,' not really. He was just more of justice in comparison. If L didn't come up against Kira, Kira would be justice. You're the best for as long as you aren't bested. Is it not so?"</p><p>Evee, her favorite red beret covering her unapologetic bed head quite serenely, shoved her in response.</p><p>Barely keeping herself from falling face-first into the Itchen river, St. Luck cursed beautifully in a long stream of her native French.</p><p>Ink, bundled up and tiny against the cold, noisy wind, found herself laughing quietly but bodily despite herself.</p><p>"Do you wish to be L?" St. Luck ventured, when they had resumed walking and Evee had conceded to being closest to the water's edge because nobody trusted her.</p><p>"No." "Yes."</p><p>Ink and Evee both answered, serious. Honest.</p><p>"Me? I don't know." St. Luck scuffed the toe of her shoe at a rock on the path. She walked a bit ahead of their little group. She was older even than Evee. Fourteen. A year away from...what? An apprenticeship with the great L? Who knew? No one had ever gotten this far with an L still alive (and not killed themselves, or turned against him, or turned away from him completely).</p><p>"When I go to sleep at night, I close my eyes thinking, what if L dies tonight? Will L die tonight? What then? I have no clue."</p><p>"L dies every night," Ink muttered around a mouthful of her chilly hair.</p><p>Evee shrugged one shoulder in an '<em>eh</em>'. "It comes with the territory."</p><p>St. Luck turned around to walk backwards so she could face them. "There will always be crime. You agree with this?"</p><p>Ink tongued her hair out and hissed, "Not this again, please. I'm pretty sure this was how Kira was born."</p><p>"That isn't the point," Evee groaned at the very same moment.</p><p>She and Ink exchanged glances, before Evee continued, exasperatedly, "You don't have to believe in justice to carry it out, Miss F."</p><p>St. Luck twisted on her heel and asked the sky, "But when you are bored to carry it out, what do you do, since it's not in your heart?"</p><p>"That's why you have Watari!" "Why do you think you get a Watari?"</p><p>Again, Ink and Evee glanced at each other.</p><p>Then they caught sight of the pink tips of St. Luck's dark hair blowing back in a way that did not match the direction of the wind.</p><p>A notebook had landed daintily on the ground in front of her. St. Luck, curious, picked it up.</p><hr/><p>"It's not that we weren't friends," Evee, who had returned her full attention to her tomato juice, laughed drily into the straw, "At the very least, she was not <em>not</em> our friend."</p><p>Ink mumbled with her mouth full, irritated again, "But she felt more like a responsibility, most times."</p><p>"She was unpredictable."</p><p>"A loose cannon," Ink sighed, exhaled her masticated hair.</p><p>Halle caught Near smiling genuinely for the first time since receiving them. Well, he knew about loose cannons. Bull-headed, blaze--through--the--world brilliant or torch it trying unpredictable wildcards that always made the game worth winning. (Even just playing, Halle thought Near would admit, if he were being honest. Near was rarely honest).</p><p>"It was my understanding," said L, in a voice that reminded everyone who the most powerful person in the room was, "that S had no enemies and was an all-around pleasant child."</p><p>Evee and Ink, with surprising synchronicity, glared (at L, at the floor, at life).</p><p>"It wasn't what she did or didn't do." Evee crushed her straw between her teeth harshly, tomato juice staining her mouth red. "It was the way she thought."</p><p>"She believed she was invincible." Ink pulled her knees towards herself, the frills of her pale gray pinafore curtaining her presently clean socks away while her feet went <em>tap-tap</em> in a rhythm that soothed her.</p><p>Evee snorted to agree, "Like an idiot."</p><p>Halle looked down at her two smartest charges, unaccustomed to them speaking like a unit. As far as she knew, Evee liked everyone the way butchers liked cattle, and Ink liked nothing she did not create with her own hands.</p><p>Had it been St. Luck's power at work again, when she attracted both of them into her orbit? Whether they thought they viewed her unkindly or not, the truth remained that both of them made sure to get some kind of audience with L, because (consciously or unconsciously) they had decided to speak on the dead girl's behalf.</p><p>That may not have been friendship. But neither was letting yourself burn to complete someone else's puzzle. (Neither was squishing the madman that had forced your supposed rival into a corner in the most humiliating way possible.)</p><p>It was something (almost sacred).</p><p>Ink's feet paused in their little up-down. She pressed one cheek into the groove between her knees, eyes glittering up at L.</p><p>"She would have made a perfect L."</p><p>Evee spilled her drink in a choked guffaw.</p><hr/><p>There was a train, and it was speeding down an empty terrain. (Of course, there is no train. But this is the best we can communicate this part of the narrative. Allowances have to be made because the average human mind isn't willing to comprehend things beyond their sphere of experience.</p><p>To better illustrate the scene we're trying to invite the reader into, a million or so years ago, there would have been a small procession of travelers crossing bridges of ice and land. A couple hundred thousand years after that, there would have been a boat. It would have been sailing across an ocean that went on for miles and miles, the horizon landing on water on all sides. At some point down the line, there would be wagons, a caravan. Somewhere in the future, it might possibly be a commercial spaceship, cutting a path through the dead of outer space.</p><p>For now, we will say there is a train.)</p><p>So, there was a train. It sped down an empty terrain and L Lawleit sat in a compartment with three other people, contemplating being hungry. He wasn't. He was deciding if this pleased him.</p><p>Across the hall, Mihael Keehl watched his own eyes blink slowly back at him through his reflection on the window glass (this is a little bit harder to impart, in terms of concept. It's like learning you had a hand and a body and seeing your hand for the very first time. Like children flexing their fingers outside the womb for the very first time. Mello had never known he had such blue eyes. They didn't matter, back when he was still Mello. And anyway, it wasn't about eyes. It was about...people not <em>seeing</em>), and willed his scars away easy.</p><p>Suddenly, the train stopped.</p><p>(Do with that what you will.)</p><p> </p>
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